Category Archives: QOTD

QOTD: George Washington on Foreign Entanglements

“George Washington (Porthole type), Rembrandt“/ CC0 1.0

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them. . . .

Source

The Man in the Arena (video)

QOTD: Daniel Webster on Good Intentions

Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good master, but they mean to be master.

Photo by İsmail Altın on Pexels.com

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Truth versus Lies

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Never Give Up

QOTD: Evidence of Idiocracy or Lower Educational Standards?

“Free Parthenon, Athens, Greece photo“/ CC0 1.0

In 100 years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high schools to teaching Remedial English in college.

–Joseph Sobran

Another sentence from the linked article above:
” A recent meta-analysis found that while the average American undergraduate in 1960 had an IQ of 120, the figure has now sunk to 102, equal to that of the average white American. There is no longer anything “higher” about higher education.”

Food for thought.

Steve Parker, M.D.

PS: I didn’t vote in the last U.S. Presidential election, but if I did it would have been a write-in for Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Comacho.

QOTD: Solzhenitsyn’s “What If….?”

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria [paddy wagon often disguised as a delivery truck] sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!

—————————–Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (in his book, The Gulag Archipelago)

QOTD: A man with an empty stomach…

A man with an empty stomach has one problem, but a man with a full stomach has a hundred.

-Anonymouse

QOTD: “…may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

“Betsy Ross flag png sticker“/ CC0 1.0

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

Samuel Adams

QOTD: You’ll Never Guess What Shapes the U.S. Soul

“Transgender Americans shape our Nation’s soul — proudly serving in the military, curing deadly diseases, holding elected office, running thriving businesses, fighting for justice, raising families, and much more.”

— President Joe Biden, March 31, 2023